NY state insect found in NY, 1st time in decades

Published 7:10 pm, Monday, October 3, 2011

FILE - In this April 24, 2009 photo, Dr. Ralph Steinman of Rockefeller University speaks during a news conference in Albany, N.Y., Friday, April 24, 2009. The Nobel committee says American Bruce Beutler and Luxembourg-born scientist Jules Hoffmann have shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in medicine with Canadian-born Ralph Steinman on Monday, Oct. 3, 2011. Beutler and Hoffman were cited "for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity." Steinman was honored for "his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity." (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

FILE - In this April 24, 2009 photo, Dr. Ralph Steinman of...

FILE - This June 18, 2009 photo provided by Cornell University shows a nine-spotted ladybug in a lab at Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y. The rare nine-spotted ladybug, subject of a nationwide citizen science project launched after it appeared the once-ubiquitous insect had gone extinct, has been found in New York state for the first time in 29 years. (AP Photo/Cornell University, Ellen Woods)

ITHACA -- The rare nine-spotted ladybug, subject of a nationwide citizen science project launched after it appeared the insect had gone extinct, has been found in New York state for the first time there in 29 years.

Entomologist John Losey of Cornell University's Lost Ladybug Project said Monday that a nine-spotted ladybug was found by a project participant at a Long Island organic farm in July, and scientists visiting the farm found more of the insects.

The bug is New York's official state insect but it hadn't been found there for decades until now, although it has been spotted in other states since the project got under way 12 years ago.

The nine-spotted ladybug was once one of the most common ladybugs in the United States.